


Those who abide in love

by hesychasm (Jintian)



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle, Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/hesychasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandy takes an exam, meets the future love of his life, and returns home for Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those who abide in love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinco/gifts).



> This is set during the academic winter break following the Thanksgiving of _A Swiftly Tilting Planet_.

Sandy first noticed her— _really_ noticed her—during the final exam for Torts. He was already halfway through the outline for his second essay answer when the door at the back of the room opened noisily and someone rushed in. He was sitting in a high row of the theater-style classroom; below him he could see the other students' heads lift and turn in unison, following the woman's progress as she clattered down to the table where the proctor sat, engaged in a brief whispered exchange, then collected an exam booklet and sat in the front row.

His main impression of her was that she had long black hair, but now that he thought about it, he had a recollection of her as well. During the semester, their Torts professor had drafted students in alphabetical order to field questions about the assigned case readings. The black-haired woman's turn had come sometime in the middle of the semester, before Sandy's. She'd had some sort of accent which he hadn't quite been able to place.

Before Sandy turned his attention back to his exam, he saw a few students glance at each other and grimace. A couple shook their heads. One smirked. They were already half an hour into a ninety minute time limit, and he knew what they were thinking: _Glad that's not me. God, what an idiot. At least we know where the bottom of the curve is._

He approached the next two essay answers with care and deliberation, and was one of the last to finish. As he handed in his exam, the black-haired woman stood, closing her booklet with a satisfied expression, and turned hers in as well. She followed him out the door, drawing up level with him as it swung shut behind them.

"As expected, no?" she said cheerfully, in the lilting accent he remembered. "Hodgkins pulled no tricks."

Surprised, Sandy couldn't help but give her an assessing look. He'd had a moment of panic when his mind had completely blanked trying to remember the _Palsgraf_ test, and he was still feeling sort of shaky about it. A fourth of his grade potentially lost to a lapse of memory! And here was this woman who'd had a third less time to finish, acting as if she'd aced it.

He didn't generally hold with the competitiveness of his classmates—growing up with Meg and Charles Wallace, not to mention his parents, he'd long since come to peace with his intellectual abilities or lack thereof. But he did feel a slightly affronted curiosity about the woman's casual attitude. Was it merely false bravado?

"Yes, it was largely straightforward," he offered in reply. Something held him back from questioning her about her tardiness. "But what did you think of the last question? At first it seemed like a straight copy of _Katko_ , but then she threw in the extra gun."

"A way to dock a few points if overlooked," the woman said confidently, "but it wouldn't have changed my basic analysis."

Her eyes were the most incredible shade of blue—so dark they were almost indigo. She was also tall, just a couple of inches shorter than his six-foot-plus in her stylish heeled boots, so that when those incredible eyes met his, it was more or less directly.

There was just a hint of a question in her expression which made him want to respond even though she'd actually asked him nothing. "My name's Sandy," he said. "Sandy Murry." He shifted his study materials from right arm to left arm and extended his hand to shake.

Her fingers were slender, but strong. "Rhea Kazoli."

Sandy thought for a second. "Is that Greek?"

"Yes—I'm impressed. Most people guess Italian at first."

"My mother once ran an experiment with some Greek colleagues. There was a Kazoli in the bunch."

"Experiment as in a scientific one? The only Kazolis I know who are scientists are all mad. Perhaps you're speaking of a psychological experiment. That would make more sense."

The way her mouth moved when she spoke, the curve of her lips, made her seem predisposed to smile—as if she had a joke just waiting for the right opening. He liked that.

"My mother's a microbiologist," he clarified. "But I've never actually met these colleagues, just listened to her dinner conversation about them. I'm sure I'd have remembered if she thought they were mad." He was beginning to ramble, so he cut himself off before it could get embarrassing. Then he heard himself say, "Uh...I have two more exams this week, but having just finished one, I don't really feel like going back to my cave of an apartment for more studying just yet. Feel like getting a cup of coffee?"

Rhea's smile bloomed. "I think we've earned ourselves a reprieve."

Over cappuccinos in the law students' favorite hangout, with the early winter sunset beginning outside the window, Sandy learned that Rhea's mother was a top executive at a major Greek investment bank and that her father stood to inherit one of the oldest real estate conglomerates in Athens. She stated these facts in the casual tone of someone describing the weather at a picnic.

"Mother wants me to go into corporate finance," Rhea said, flicking a lock of her long hair behind her shoulder. "She was all for me getting an American law degree, because it's simply the most useful qualification for working in international capital markets. She already has a summer position lined up for me with the bank's in-house counsel."

Sandy nodded in vague understanding. "I can't imagine myself lasting too long in a corporate environment. Sorry."

"Why apologize? It isn't for everyone."

"True, but it's hardly pragmatic. I'll probably be paying off my law school loans past retirement, while you'll be making five-figure bonuses right after graduation."

Rhea tilted her head at him, that smile teasing the corner of her mouth. "I didn't say I would take the position. Mad Greek scientists have nothing on Greek financiers, even the sane ones."

"So what'll you do instead?"

"I don't know. Something of use, I hope. Something where I could help an actual person, rather than a corporation that's a legal fiction of a person." Her dark eyes flashed. "I think I'd be satisfied if I could occasionally swing the balance of good and evil in the world back over to good."

"Yes," Sandy said. "I understand what you mean." Their eyes met and held for a moment.

"At any rate, it's a discussion I shall have with my mother over winter break, when I fly home to Athens."

Sandy grimaced. "I know a little something about choosing a different life from your parents. Mine are understanding enough about me going into law, but still, it's not exactly a family profession. I wish you the best."

Rhea picked up the check for their second round of cappuccinos, waving off his protests. "You can get the next thing. Dinner, perhaps, when we're back." Then she scribbled her number on the back of the receipt, as carefree and confident as she'd been about the exam. "If I don't run into you before you leave, have a good holiday, Sandy Murry."

She leaned in and brushed a quick kiss against his cheek, bringing with her a whiff of jasmine.

That night, in his dreams, he had a brief impression of wind in his face, of wings flapping, the feathers pale and gold.

*

At the end of exam week, he left for winter break. Although his parents' house was only a couple of hours away by car and he wasn't expected until dinnertime, he found himself waking early. He sat up in bed, noting the lavender dawn light outside his apartment window, cut with streetlights. Suddenly, he craved the old white farmhouse, its rolling acreage, the quiet woods, the star-watching rock. Home had all the comforts that a bachelor student apartment lacked: closets and coat hooks full of well-worn winter gear shared by all; a fully stocked fridge, freezer and pantry; many hands to prepare hot chocolate, consommé, sandwiches and table-straining meals for each other.

He threw some hopefully not-too-soiled clothes into his duffel bag, hunted around for his snow boots and the shopping bag full of Christmas gifts he hadn't yet wrapped, then tried to do a quick clean so he wouldn't have to come back to a dust-ridden pigsty. He'd meant to do all of this the night before, but in law school everything seemed to happen last minute—he simply never had the time or energy to get to it before then.

His car, a sputtery faded blue Ford which had been Meg's before she got married and which had passed to Sandy by right of the few minutes he'd existed outside the womb before Dennys, took ages to warm up. He was already miles north on the highway before he had to turn the heat down.

" _Expect heavier snow over the next few days and on into Christmas_ ," the radio advised. " _If you haven't switched to snow tires yet, it's time._ "

He felt tired, physically, from lack of sleep. But he also drove in a state of mental blankness which made him vaguely grateful the roads were empty at such an early hour. Four exams and two papers in two weeks. He was absolutely depleted.

When Sandy finally pulled up the long driveway, the house came into view first, rambling and multi-winged. Then he caught sight of the small grove of Christmas trees which had replaced the vegetable garden—still a bit disorienting even though he and Dennys had labored over the planting and the tending during their college vacations. A good number of the trees were missing compared to the last time Sandy had been home, at Thanksgiving. The villagers must be well-supplied for Christmas.

As he got out of the car, two familiar figures came through the trees, one a mirror copy of himself, both with light brown hair which would grow blonder in summer months. His brothers.

"Charles Wallace _said_ you were arriving soon," Dennys exclaimed, throwing his arms around Sandy. "I told him you weren't likely to even be awake before noon, but he insisted."

"I suppose I'm still on my exam schedule. Looking forward to sleeping in the next couple of weeks, though."

They clapped each other's backs, and then Sandy and Charles Wallace did the same. His youngest brother was as slight-framed and small as he'd been just a month earlier. Next to him, Ananda, her golden tail wagging, gave a small excited hop and then placed her forepaws delicately on Sandy's knees. Her amber eyes gazed up at him eloquently.

"You've arrived in time to help us choose a tree," Charles Wallace said.

"And help us chop it down and carry it in, obviously," Dennys added.

Sandy grinned and looked around at all the sturdy evergreens. "Isn't there a suitable shrub or something?"

Dennys gave him a playful shove. "Let's get on with it."

Dennys had finished his semester the day before and arrived that night. Meg and Calvin had an appointment with their obstetrician and would come for dinner later. And then their family would all be together again.

After some good-natured joking, they selected the tallest of the trees, a seven-footer which Dennys judged to be just around four and a half feet in diameter. Charles Wallace trotted off to the toolshed to fetch the axe, Ananda following him devotedly.

"He looks all right," Sandy remarked, his eyes tracking Charles Wallace's progress for a bit. "No lingering issues from that weird fainting spell in the snow last month?"

"Mother and Father say not. I haven't asked if I could check him over or anything, but he seems like the same old Charles Wallace."

Sandy nodded in relief. He stood next to his twin in the thin scrim of snow, contemplating the deep green of the fir's needles and the country quiet of their family's property, hushed by winter. The scent of the fir filled his nostrils, bringing with it all the usual holiday associations. His depleted soul felt at peace finally.

Then Dennys broke the silence. "I meant to call you this week, but I didn't want to interrupt your studying. I've invited someone to Christmas Eve."

Sandy turned to him. "Oh?"

"Her name's Lucy. She's a classmate of mine."

An image flashed in Sandy's mind: Rhea Kazoli, her teasing smile and indigo eyes.

"We started seeing each other just before Thanksgiving," Dennys continued. "But I wasn't sure then how serious it would be."

 _Which means he's sure now, if he's invited her here_. She'd be the first romantic prospect since Calvin to share a meal with the Murrys—neither Sandy nor Dennys had brought anyone like that home before, and Charles Wallace was too young.

Dating was not something Dennys did, as a rule. Despite attracting his fair share of attention, he'd resolved to stay focused on his studies during medical school. Sandy had told him, "Good luck to you. I already know I can't do even three years of law school so single-mindedly."

But Sandy had always been more open to that sort of thing. He had lost his ability to touch a unicorn years before, long enough ago that the memory of it was already faded and swathed in gentle nostalgia. He still believed it had been worth it—he'd been in love, eighteen years old, old enough for war and the vote and certainly old enough to judge what was sacrifice versus gain.

And yet, for a time he hadn't been able to speak of it to Dennys. Dennys who had danced beneath the stars with Noah's family and sometimes still listened for them at the star-watching rock. Dennys who had slept for years in the bunk above Sandy and seemed content to sleep alone indefinitely.

He had neither approved nor disapproved when Sandy finally told him—the relationship was already over by then anyway, dissolved into friendship rather than acrimony, at least. Sandy had said over the phone, his heart beating fast, " _Anyway, I couldn't have asked for a better partner for my first time, so I'm grateful for that_ ," and after a pause Dennys had said, simply, " _I suppose that's all anyone can ask_."

Now, at last, Dennys seemed to be asking.

He was waiting for Sandy's reaction to the news, and Sandy could sense his nervousness, likely the way Dennys had sensed his during that phone call.

"Well, I look forward to meeting her," Sandy said. "You did warn her I'm the better-looking twin, right?"

Dennys snorted. "I think Lucy might have an aversion to lawyers. Entirely understandable."

He and Dennys were standing next to each other, but for a moment it was as if Lucy stood between them, a woman who was as yet faceless to Sandy, but who had a presence undeniable.

And suddenly Sandy felt another between them, too—a presence that had been there first and thus could never quite be forgotten, that reminded Sandy briefly of the dream he'd had after meeting Rhea, of wings in the wind.

"She'd want you to be happy, Den," Sandy said softly, around the ache in his throat. "So do I."

"I know," Dennys said, equally soft. "Same to you."

The door of the toolshed banged shut as Charles Wallace and Ananda came back toward them, and then it was time to collect the tree.

*

Winter break was almost like childhood again: snowmen in the yard, hockey at the village pond, hunting for Louise the Larger, trudging through snow-filled woods with Ananda gamboling joyfully ahead.

Meg and Calvin visited regularly—the baby, a girl, had begun to kick.

"She'll be a swimmer," Charles Wallace predicted. "A regular mermaid."

Meg laughed, pulling her thick shawl tighter around her shoulders. "What I wouldn't give to be next to a warm sea right now. Pregnancy's having a detrimental effect on the circulation to my extremities, which is about as horrible in winter as you might expect."

"We could always take up Canon Tallis's invitation to stay with him in Gibraltar," Calvin said. "You're still in the okay-to-fly zone, so it's not too late."

"I think our parents would have something to say about their first grandchild being born across the ocean."

"How's the discussion on names progressing?" Sandy asked.

"We're at a standstill," Meg sighed. "I thought Branwen or Zillah, after Calvin's mother, but he thinks she wouldn't take it the right way. Feel free to nominate other candidates."

 _Rhea's a lovely name_ , Sandy thought. But he said, "I'm sure you'll come up with something magnificent yet appropriate."

Lucy turned out to be delightful. She brought small gifts for the Murrys, and joined in the singing at Christmas Eve dinner with gusto. Sandy told her honestly that her voice would have put his college glee club to shame. "Why do you want to slave away in medical school when you've got talent like that?"

"Thank you," she said, smiling. "You know, it's fascinating to me that Dennys isn't much of a singer, considering your identical genetics."

"Technically I came first," Sandy joked. "Dennys is just the inferior copy."

Lucy grinned. "Or maybe he's the new and improved version?"

"I like her," Sandy told Dennys later that night, settled in their bunk beds. "She's our kind of people."

Dennys's sleepy voice drifted down from the top bunk. "Yeah, that's why _I_ like her, anyway."

It took Sandy a while longer to drift off. He found his thoughts circling back to Rhea again. Not a surprise—she was objectively a knockout, and his college relationship had been a while ago. But was she their kind of people? With her carefully cosmopolitan looks, the connections of her family and her corporate job waiting in the wings? He couldn't imagine her stomping along the trails he and Dennys had cut through the woods when they were kids, not in those boots of hers.

But what had Rhea said? That she'd like to _occasionally swing the balance of good and evil in the world back over to good_.

Sandy wondered what things looked like inside her world, whether she truly believed people fit into such a binary. He thought Meg and Charles Wallace probably did, in their heart of hearts. There had been some passionate discussions over Thanksgiving which Sandy thought had revealed a few of their convictions about human nature and predispositions.

But he'd witnessed firsthand not only human ignorance and greed and duplicity, but also the pride and arrogance of far more powerful beings. And he'd seen the flipside in powerful beings who most would consider the standard bearers for "good." He'd seen their indifference and aloofness, their reluctance to touch human lives beyond the superficial, even in the face of utter disaster.

Sandy preferred to take matters into his own hands, to solve problems by making decisions and choices. To control chaos rather than leave everything to entropy. Perhaps that was a form of arrogance, wanting to direct the course of even his own small part in the universe. But not everyone could take a unicorn into a quantum leap. He had to believe people could effect change all by themselves—not only in events but also within each other. How else were people meant to _matter_?

He wondered what Rhea would think if he tried to tell her such things. Whether or not she actually believed in a binary of good versus evil—maybe that wasn't the important part. She'd professed a desire to be in the middle of the struggle. Which meant she at least believed she had the power and responsibility to influence its outcome.

Dennys's steady, even breathing seemed to smooth the winding trail of Sandy's thoughts. Their final destination before sleep: the receipt from the coffee shop, tucked inside his wallet, Rhea's phone number written on it in bold, dark strokes.

*

Dennys went back to school first, as he had the furthest to travel. He made his goodbyes to the rest of the family, then Sandy walked him outside.

Dennys stood next to the open driver's side door of his car, twirling his keys. "By the time spring break rolls around," he remarked, "we'll be uncles."

"Hard to fathom," Sandy said. Their sister Meg, who'd always been so resentful and frustrated at the world, was now building a family of her own in it.

And Dennys could very likely be next, if the way he'd looked at Lucy on Christmas Eve was any indication.

Abruptly, Sandy pulled his twin into a hug—a real one, no manly back-slapping necessary. "Drive safe," he said. "Speak soon."

"Take care, Uncle Sand."

Sandy stood and watched as the car pulled away, the silhouette of Dennys's hand waving jauntily through the back windshield.

*

A ringing phone greeted Sandy as he opened the door of his apartment.

"Mr. Murry? This is Professor Hodgkins."

Sandy's duffel slid from his shoulder to the floor. "Right, yes, hello, Professor." _I messed up the_ Palsgraf _test after all. Or I completely spaced on something else. Either way, I failed Torts so spectacularly that Hodgkins has to let me know in person. Maybe I can beg her for a retake—_

"Every semester I take on a couple of students as research assistants to help me with my practice. I go for the best of the bunch, as you might imagine, and your Torts exam was right at the top of the curve. I'd like to offer you a position for the spring. It'll be an added burden on your usual first year workload, mind, but I think a valuable one."

Relief surged through Sandy. Not only had he not failed, he'd scored a plum assistantship!

It might have been smarter to wait a day or so to decide, but Sandy didn't really believe in waiting. "I'd love to be your research assistant, Professor. Thank you."

"Excellent. The other student has already accepted, so why don't we all meet in my office tomorrow morning for an orientation?"

He was sitting in the waiting area outside Professor Hodgkins's office when the click of precise stylish boot heels caught his attention. He turned his head to look, and there was Rhea Kazoli approaching down the hall.

She stopped and sat next to him. "I'm not late again, am I?"

A grin spread over Sandy's face. "Are you the other assistant?"

"It seems so. How was your holiday, then?"

She _had_ been confident after the exam, after all. "Brilliant," he said, and he wasn't just talking about the holiday. "How was yours?"

Rhea shrugged elegantly. "It may take a few more discussions with my mother before she'll accept that my career path must diverge from hers."

"Ah, I see. A bit tense, then?"

"That would be the civilized way to phrase it, yes. Eventually I think I'll persuade her it's better to be on the side of the angels." Rhea pursed her lips. "Of course, it would help if I had a more specific idea of what that would look like."

"I'm still figuring that out myself," Sandy said honestly. "But either way, it'll be our own path. Our own choices."

That teasing smile of hers flickered alight like a candle flame. " _Our_ , hmm? Are we treading this path together?"

"Could be," he said, teasing her back. "It's just that I happen to know the angels need all the help they can get."


End file.
